


beyond the walls of safety

by heartofstanding



Series: force & longing & faith [2]
Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 15:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1555091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nina is tired and safe - whatever safe means in a zombie apocalypse. Nina-centric companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/906239">dark & quiet & dead.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	beyond the walls of safety

Nina is tired. It feels like the start to a story: _Nina is tired. Nina is so very, very tired that when she finally goes to bed, she will sleep for a hundred years and even when she wakes she will still be tired._ It isn't a story, though, hasn't been a story for a long time. She'd stopped believing that stories were just stories a long time ago, around the same time she'd given up on the idea that there were no monsters under the bed. The same time she'd seen the Wolf, and now—

Now the whole world knew the monsters were real.

Her feet ache with each cycle of the ward, her back aches as she bends down to check the patients' charts. She's not sure how long it's been since her shift started or how long it has left to run. Before (and that's what they're all calling it, _before_ , though some people on the radio like to call it BZ, _before zombies_ ), she'd never worked a shift longer than thirteen hours, and now she would be lucky if she sat down before the first thirteen hours were up.

She'd complain to someone, point out it wasn't fair, except they all knew it was unfair. Complaining wouldn't change anything. It was necessary. They'd lost too many people, the survivors crammed into the few safe havens (and they're lucky just to have made it – sometimes the radio talks about the buses that were attacked or went missing), that everyone just has to grit their teeth and bear it.

Inexorably, she misses George. She pushes it down when she can, because it's painful, because it's useless, but it's always there. Sometimes she thinks she sees him out of the corner of her eye, but when she looks it's always a stranger. Sometimes she thinks she sees Mitchell and her fingers itch, the slow tide of anger rising in her, the shout of _he stayed for YOU, you're going to kill him, you understand? his blood, your hands_. Though sometimes she thinks Mitchell knew that, remembers the ferocity of his arguments. _he was going to die for us_ , she remembers George saying and doesn't know what to think.

Her pager beeps. A break at last.

+

Even when her shift's over, there's no time for rest. It's a full moon, according to the calendar, and it's a long drive out to the compound. They'd been found out, of course they were. After the vampires had been discovered, it had only been a matter of time before people found out about werewolves. At least no one was throwing werewolves over the fence as zombie-fodder. Yet.

They say, sometimes, on the radio that the zombies might have been the bastard offspring of a vampire and a werewolf, but someone else always claims vampires are sterile. Nina doesn't know. She never thought to ask Mitchell about these things until he was gone.

At any rate, the werewolves are regulated. Resources – human and wolf – are too short these day to keep them in these compounds all the time, but on full moons it's a must. Those few wolves that had managed to cling to their money could afford luxury cages in private clinics, rare though they are, or bribes for better treatment. Nina had never had that kind of money, so each month she found herself making the long bus trip out to some government-funded grey box, on the edges of the safe zone.

She buys a sandwich and a coffee from the hospital cafeteria and eats it at the bus stop, waiting for the bus. It's always late and it always sounds like its seconds away from breaking down on the street, but there would be hell to pay if it didn't come, and not just from her.

Some of the other nurses see her waiting as they walk past to their way out and Lorraine smirks at her as she walks away. Lorraine thinks werewolves should have been left with the vampires, left to fight the losing battle against the zombies, and happens to schedule Nina for the last shift before a full moon. For kicks, or something.

Still, Ava comes over and they smoke for awhile.

'They've put up the posters again.'

'What for?' There are always posters being put up, warnings about diseases and zombies and cries for help.

'For the research teams.' Ava stares at her with dark eyes that remind Nina a bit too much like Mitchell's, even if there's no glimmer of green below the brown. 'You know, the scientists working on the zombie problem.' Ava laughs, raises her cigarette as if to make a point, but doesn't say anything.

'Oh,' Nina says, 'You thinking of volunteering?'

'Maybe. I don't know. What about you?'

Nina scoffs. 'You think they'd take a werewolf?' She shakes her head and raises the cigarette to her mouth.

'They might. Not everyone is like Lorraine, you know.'

'No, sometimes they carry guns to shoot us with.'

Ava shrugs, stares across the black asphalt. It's beginning to rain, turning everything sleek and slick, the surface will look like wet ink in a moment. 'I don't know. I want to help, but where am I more useful? Helping work out how to stop these things or helping people in the hospital?'

Nina nods. It's a point she's considered every time she's noticed one of those small flyers. She doesn't say anything as the peculiarly unique whining, grinding noise of the bus heralds its approach. She stubs out her cigarette and says her goodbyes.

'Good luck,' says Ava, and she stays at the bus stop for as long as Nina can see. Alone, her exhaustion swiftly catches up to her and she leans against the window and tries to sleep. The road is terrible, riddled with potholes and made from gravel, and every bump jolts her from an uneasy doze.

+

At the compound, she shows her ID and signs her name and lets the bored-looking man show her to the cell she'll turn in. It's grey and off-white and she undresses, folds her clothes and waits for the change to come.

+

In the morning, when she's human again, they bring her breakfast. Cereal that tastes like it's been found in an old vacuum and milk made from powder. Then they let her use a bathroom that has no hot water or toothpaste and push her on the bus back home (or as close as home can be), where she has a shower as hot as she can make it and curls up in bed.

When she wakes, there's a hot mug of tea left on the bedside cabinet. _George_ , she thinks and her heart leaps, but she's wrong, she's always wrong. There is no way George could be there and making her cups of tea, and yet she always thinks of him. It's Annie. There's no one else it could be, but Annie - not unless this was just some big terrible dream and she was going to wake up in her old bed in her old flat. But she's given up on dreams, accepted the nightmare that life is.

She gets up and goes out into the kitchen, wrapping her hands around the mug. Annie's sitting on the sofa staring out of the grimy window. There's not much out there to see, just a lot of grey, smog and buildings that have seen better days. But they all have, haven't they?

'I killed one last night,' says Annie, 'I know it sounds petty. I know all the deaths get reported as victories. But it wasn't me. I wanted to _save_ people, Nina, that was my thing, that was why I joined up. I didn't want to kill them. They were _people_ once.'

'I know.' Nina sips at her tea and makes her way to the sofa, to sit on the opposite end. There's a fleck of blue sky in the distance and she wonders if that's what Annie's looking at, that one speck of blue in a sea of grey.

Annie looks at her with blue eyes. Before all of this, Annie's eyes were dark and full of light and love, but now they're nearly always cold and blue, the ghost taking over.

'What happened?'

'Some stupid kids. They climbed the wall, thought they were going to be heroes. They nearly got themselves killed. I couldn't let them die.'

Nina nods. 'You saved them, Annie. Don't make it a bad thing.'

'I guess.' Annie shrugs, stares back out the window. 'I just keep running it over and over in my mind, trying to see if there wasn't something I could've done differently. If I couldn't have saved them all.'

'It's done,' Nina says, quietly, 'Annie, it's done. There's no point dwelling on the past.'

'The past?' Annie jerks her head up, stares at Nina with wide eyes, 'Is that what you're doing now? Moving on, forgetting about—'

'Don't. Annie, don't. They're not going to come back.'

'You don't know that!' Annie's on her feet, walking towards the windows. Leaning on the sill, she stares out at the greyness and she almost merges into it. ' _We_ don't know a thing about what's happened to them!'

Nina presses her hands to her head. It's too much, the thought of what has happened, what her life is now and the hope that tastes like vomit, the tiredness down in the marrow of her bones, that radiates from her heart with each treacherous beat. Sometimes she thinks what it would have been like, staying behind, watching the bus disappear and knowing she would never be safe again, but she wouldn't be alone.

She doesn't have Annie's faith, she doesn't believe that they'd see the boys again, she doesn't believe they'll win. She doesn't know how to find that faith. All she has is her longing and the knowledge that no one gets what they want.

'I'm having a shower,' she says and walks away.

+

The day's shifted focus, that tiny speck of blue sky covered with thick clouds that promise rain. Annie's still by the window, hands pressed against the glass, staring outside, and Nina's tired and hungry as she rummages in the kitchen for something decent.

'I – we might have found them.' Annie glances over her shoulder and then turns back to the window. 'An old pub. God. How pathetic.' She shakes her head. 'They'd been there, but so had the zombies. We found bodies.'

Nina clutches hard at the bench, feels the cheap laminate beneath her fingers. She wants to be sick, wants to throw up. Annie's suddenly there, by the stove, and the lights are flickering on and off.

'Not, not _them_ , but you know. They'd been found, I think, and they fought back, killed a few. The pub was practically destroyed. Think there'd been a fire.' Annie sniffs, swallows and raises her head to stare at the fridge, the few fridge magnets advertising a plumber and the info-lines. 'Or, you know – someone had staked a vampire.'

'Oh god,' Nina says and has to fight down the burning in her throat, the tears that blur her eyes. Distantly, she hears a whisper of _george might still be alive!_ and doesn't know if it's Annie or her own exhausted hope. With Mitchell dead—

 _If_ Mitchell is dead (and not just dead, but gone from the world as well), then George is alone. George is alone in the big bad world, caught beyond the walls of safety, and so sad, so alone. If Mitchell is dead, George won't last long. For all Annie's claims of _not knowing_ , Nina knows it. George is lost to them.

And Mitchell, god, she doesn't know what to think, to understand that all of him – his guilt and his danger and his sweet charm is gone, taken from this world. She is sorry. She will never, never, understand him now. The tangled mess of him that offered support and kindness to her as he refused it for himself. He has killed George with this friendship – for all his protestations, _he_ was the reason why George stayed, why George didn't come with her on the bus. Why George isn't safe in a grey box each full moon.

Nina looks up. Annie is crying, the tears making a path down her face and Nina reaches out, pulls her into a hug. There is too much sadness in this world. Annie knows this, knows how bitter this war is, this new world they had born into unprepared and alone. They are alone and the losses keep mounting up.

+

The day slides away from her in bits and pieces. She _wants_ so much in this world, her heart aching with each remembered moment. George is gone, George is lost. She will never sleep as well as she used to and she will be sick with love for George until the end of her days. But she made her choice and he made his. Now they are both alone and both waiting for something they can't comprehend.

Annie's gone before the night comes and Nina looks for her on the concrete path below though she knows she won't see Annie. She'll have gone back to protecting them, beyond the wall, and her hands may end up covered in the blood of the monsters that forced them to this state, but Annie will grieve for them.

The next time Nina's at work, she'll think about finding one of those posters for the research teams and ringing the number printed on it, to offer her help. She wants do more, she thinks. She's tired of being tired and tired of losing everything. She wants to fight.

The grey sky darkens to black, clouds too thick and covering for more than a flash of the moon. Nina watches it for awhile and then closes the curtains, looks around at the sparse contents of her room. There is nothing left but this, these restless, exhausting patterns, the aching loss and the illusion of safety.


End file.
